Last Trip
by Delenn
Summary: "We want you to come with," Clara smiled winningly. The too bright smile she used when she lied.


**Disclaimer: Recognizable characters are not my own - I just borrow them.**

 **Pairing: River/Twelve, Clara/Danny  
**

 **Summary: "We want you to come with," Clara smiled winningly. The too bright smile she used when she lied.**

 **Rated: T**

 **Notes: Thanks to Beverly and Megs for looking this over, for their encouragement and discussion, and thanks to everyone else I probably showed this to in the interim. It took longer than I expected to get back to this, but then, sometimes we all come at things a bit timey-wimey. All remaining mistakes are always my own.**

 **Written: 12/23/14-7/22/15**

* * *

 _Last Trip_

The Doctor stood at the console, hands on the controls. He looked up at Clara, eager. "Where to?"

Clara took a deep breath. "Danny." His name choked her and threatened to close her throat, but she forced herself through it.

The Doctor turned stiffly to face Clara properly, his tone almost pleading. "Clara - we can't do that. You know we can't."

The unexpected kindness in his words brought fresh tears to Clara's eyes. She blinked them back furiously and challenged, "Why not?"

She knew why not. She knew that, if it worked like that, the Doctor wouldn't get those haunted looks in the quiet moments that she knew were filled with regret. The man who had sobbed silently in her sitting room at the mere mention of his wife's name. Well, Clara did not accept that. She was not going to be like the Doctor.

The Doctor's mouth opened and then closed. He threw up his hands in exasperation. "We can't just re-write time." His eyebrows were ominous, and he pinned her under that frosty blue glare. "Has Danny ever said he's been on a trip with us?"

Clara stood her ground. "He's never said he's not."

...

"We want you to come with," Clara smiled winningly. The too bright smile she used when she lied.

She'd invited him before and Danny had said no. Was this offer some sort of misguided tactic to make up for lying about travelling with the Doctor? Had she already forgotten that Danny genuinely preferred to find amazing things right here on Earth?

Danny scrubbed his hand over his short hair and regarded her, the Doctor and the TARDIS, currently occupying his small sitting room, warily. "Why?"

Apparently not anticipating his response, Clara's smile faltered momentarily, a shadow passing over her face before she recovered. He'd have missed it if he didn't know her so well. "Why not? It'll be fun! Just a quick trip and back in time for tea."

The Doctor hovered close to the TARDIS doors as usual, but he was regarding Danny intently from under his eyebrows - paying Danny a begrudging attention. Danny gestured toward him. "He doesn't look like he wants me to come."

It was one thing that Danny and the Doctor were in complete agreement about.

Clara immediately glared at the Doctor, who looked momentarily chagrined, like a pupil being reprimanded. "Of course he does. Don't you, Doctor?"

To his credit, the Doctor's expression remained inscrutable as he threw open the TARDIS doors and marched inside. "One trip. You saved the world once. That entitles you to one trip. Fair's fair and all that rot." He spun quickly to fiddle with the console and evade further questions.

The Doctor was at least a better liar than Clara was. When he wasn't trying to pass himself off as a school caretaker, that was.

Wherever they were going, it was a quick - if slightly bumpy - ride. Danny held onto the railing and Clara held onto him, beaming up at him as if she could will him to enjoy himself. Danny mustered a smile for her, keeping a wary eye on the Doctor's frantic movements at the console and the giant moving machine at its heart.

They landed with a wheeze and a soft thump, and Clara was dragging him toward the doors eagerly almost the second they did so. The Doctor followed more sedately, which worried Danny. Something felt off, beyond Clara's sudden determination to force Danny on an adventure he had no desire for.

Danny was done with adventures. He just wanted a plain, boring, predictable life. All the things Clara was not. And probably all the reasons he loved her.

He'd follow Clara worse places than space to protect her from whatever was lurking behind her eyes.

They stepped out into a busy city street, the sound of an ocean in the distance, and aliens of all types wandering around between them. Danny took a moment to adjust, watching the strange culture all about him.

The Doctor caught them up, gesturing expansively at the towering twinned architecture and grand streets. "Height of the Aplan Empire. Artistic Renaissance. Lovely fellows - two heads. And absolutely nothing dangerous for the next two centuries."

"Hello, sweetie."

Everyone turned at the confident, blatantly sexy voice booming across the courtyard. The Doctor's eyes lit up and he didn't look away, though he mumbled something that sounded like, "On the other hand... sentences to stay away from."

A woman made her way through the crowd. She only had one head but more than enough hair for two. She walked straight up to the Doctor and snogged him full out, her arms looping around his neck.

The Doctor froze for a moment and then, surprisingly, his frame softened into hers, his hands resting gently at her lower back. It was such an intimate embrace that Danny averted his eyes, feeling the voyeur even though they were fully clothed and in public. After several long moments, while Danny shuffled awkwardly and Clara looked as though she had seen a ghost, the woman and the Doctor parted marginally, foreheads pressed together.

Danny braved a glance up from his shoes to find the Doctor licking his lips, smeared with red from her lipstick. "Trying to kill me again, dear?"

The woman's eyes and then lips followed the path of his tongue. Thankfully, it was only a brief kiss before she pulled back and smirked at him. "Not since our wedding."

"Which one?" The Doctor swayed into the woman who was apparently his wife, voice deep and playful.

They were flirting, Danny realized, his mouth dropping open in something approximating horror. He'd never thought to see the Doctor flirt, but somehow it seemed natural for him when around his wife. His wife. Danny had spent so much time loathing the Doctor for hating soldiers and whisking Clara away on grand (dangerous) adventures that he'd not really stopped to consider the Doctor as a person. He didn't really seem like a person, except apparently he flirted and had a wife and... wait... had they been married more than once?

The Doctor's wife chuckled, eyes sparkling and voice low and pleased. "Spoilers!"

The Doctor seemed delighted by this absurd exchange, sighing in relief before his eyebrows closed. "Good job cyanide doesn't affect Time Lords."

"I forgot," she wiped the last smudge of lipstick away with her thumb, lingering.

He pressed a gentle kiss to the pad of her thumb, looking so in love that he seemed like a new man, as though he were only whole when with his wife. "Liar."

"Always. And it does _affect_ you. It's just not poisonous." Her hand trailed down to rest at his collar.

Recovered marginally at last, Clara cleared her throat to interrupt wherever this was going. Twice. Loudly.

The Doctor pulled a face, one of his hands idly playing with his wife's hair. He leaned in closer, as though asking her a secret, but his voice was still loud enough to make out easily. "Do you hear that annoying sound? Like a swarm of Jovian hornets."

She smiled, gentler than before. "It's your companion."

The Doctor grumbled, "I've never had a swarm for a companion. Well, not for any length of time. Hard to keep a good swarm together..."

"No," his wife interrupted with the patience of someone used to the Doctor's rambling diatribes. "Clara. Your companion. She's the source of the noise."

As one, they turned to Clara and Danny, letting them into their private bubble. The Doctor looked confused, while his wife still looked amused. "Clara, have you been replaced by a ravenous swarm?"

Before Clara could huff out a reply, Danny offered his hand to the woman at the Doctor's side. "Hello. I'm Danny Pink. I teach maths at Coal Hill."

He realized then that he knew nothing about the Doctor's wife - whether she was human or when she was from. A bit silly, introducing his school when she probably had no idea what he was on about and how did he always manage to put his foot in his mouth when it came to first impressions?

But the woman merely smiled, tossing her hair back and shaking his hand with a shockingly firm grip. "Professor River Song, archaeologist." Her eyes darted to the Doctor and back. "Coal Hill? How interesting." She released Danny and turned to Clara, still staring a bit rudely. "And you must be Clara. Travelling with the Doctor? My, they do keep getting younger - don't they, Doctor?"

The Doctor glared but was saved from bickering by Clara's little confused frown deepening into action. "You're the Doctor's wife - yes - we've done this before."

River stopped her. "You may have met me - spoilers! - but it's my first time meeting you from my perspective."

"No, but that's the thing - it was your first time meeting me the last time we met." Clara glanced meaningfully at the Doctor and avoided looking at Danny.

In turn, the Doctor pointedly avoided looking at Clara or River.

For her part, River shrugged easily, though her eyes lingered over the Doctor a moment longer than necessary. "Oh, then I lied. I've met my own parents for the first time three times." She paused, pinning the suddenly fidgeting Doctor under her gaze. "Unless him indoors has been rewriting time again. He does that. Hazards of taking up with Time Lords." She was carefully blasé, but her eyes creased at the edges.

The Doctor scoffed, finally meeting River's eyes in challenge. "I'm not the one who collapsed all of history just to avoid killing one man."

River swayed closer to him, though they'd not actually parted very far at all, eyes flashing. "Not one man, you. And now we're back to our wedding. Feeling sentimental in your dotage, sweetie?"

Before they could start bickering again, or something else, Clara jumped in. "Hang on - River almost killed you at your wedding?"

River laughed brightly, biting her lip and giving the Doctor a smug look. "Oh, that's nothing. The day I met him, I succeeded. Our first date."

The Doctor leaned perilously close to River again, as though she'd reminded him of something salacious. "You proposed, too. Bad girl."

It appeared they were back to what passed for flirting between them. All nonsensical statements that any reasonable person would be appalled at. Well, Danny had never thought the Doctor was very reasonable, which probably meant it was too much to expect from his wife. Or, perhaps it was the danger that the Doctor liked. He certainly never seemed to be very far from it.

They were far too close again, back to that intimate bubble where they might as well have been naked for all the attention they were paying to the rest of the world. "Lucky for you I did, since you forgot that step before our wedding."

The Doctor huffed, as though it was perfectly reasonable to forget to propose. "I was in a bit of a hurry. All of history collapsing."

"Excuses, excuses," River sing-songed, and Danny thought that she meant to kiss him again, the way her eyes dropped to the Doctor's mouth.

Danny hastily turned to Clara, who looked torn between her usual desire to know everything and the very real fear that the Doctor's wife would divulge far too much information. Danny shook his head at her; he already felt a headache coming on from trying to piece things together, and he had no desire to make himself ill at the image of the Doctor in his all together.

It was almost a relief when a siren sounded, loud and shrill, and Danny felt his training jolt into place. He immediately surveyed his surroundings, searching for the threat. His body welcomed the familiar rush of adrenaline like an old friend, but his mind was suddenly assaulted by visions of bombs and bodies and chaos, sweat breaking out across his brow and his heart tripling its pace.

Movement in the corner of his eye: River alert and wary as she grabbed the Doctor's hand and scanned the sky with a muttered oath. "Time to go, sweetie."

The locals were already scattering and disappearing behind closed doors. Danny turned to see Clara wide-eyed (but looking a bit excited, as though she'd been bored before with no hint of intrigue beyond the Doctor's wife) and the Doctor confused, eyebrows frowning, head turned toward the heavens.

"No, that can't be right. This is the Renaissance - 200 years of peace and prosperity and nothing dangerous in sight." He smiled at River, apparently more concerned with her than the sirens. "Except for you, dear."

River huffed with a kind of impatient fondness that was completely out of place amongst the chaos erupting around them, looking flattered. "Maybe you meant to land in the Renaissance, Doctor, but that ended about 45 seconds ago." She was perfectly calm, though, eyes and body instantly alert.

River gave Danny a brisk nod and pulled the Doctor into a run. Danny turned to Clara, but she was already following, the four of them dodging around the fleeing crowds and trying to stay together.

The Doctor shouted something that sounded like, "Sontarans, then. Is that why you're here?"

River laughed while she ran, a gun appearing in her free hand, and her grip on the Doctor never wavering. "I never could resist a good hen night!"

The sky flashed a rainbow of colors, the first weapons fire beginning to rain down, people screaming and chunks of buildings shattering to bits.

Danny grit his teeth, steeling himself. "We need to get to shelter," he shouted over the noise. The weapons fire was unpredictable - there must have been a battery of ships above them - which made it all the more dangerous. There didn't seem to be a clear target, other than mass chaos and devastation. The worst kind.

They were headed for an old, squat, sturdy looking building that seemed as though it would hold, even if the rainbow fire targeted it. River veered that direction, but the Doctor halted for a fraction of a second, eyes on the entryway. "River - we should -"

Clara and Danny hovered uncertainly, the weapons fire growing closer with every passing second. Danny caught a glimpse of a sign reading: _The Foundry_ , but it looked harmless enough and they really needed to get out of the open.

River's eyes met the Doctor's steadily, challenging. "No. Too far." Watching them, it struck Danny that, for all the Doctor's sneering about soldiers, he was clearly married to one. The officer and his soldier...

The Doctor let River yank him forward, and the four of them barely bothering to knock before the heavy double doors swung open and they burst through, slamming them closed immediately.

Twice the normal number of wide eyes stared at them, curious and a bit frightened. "Hello?" echoed from two mouths.

The Doctor fished a piece of paper out of his wallet and flashed it quickly at the swarm of Aplans in front of them. "Right. Intros. I'm the Doctor." He gestured in turn to River, Clara and Danny. "Wife. Carer. PE teacher."

Clara glared at the Doctor but mustered up a wide, impressively convincing grin for their unwitting hosts. "We're not going to hurt you - we're here to help."

It was a bold statement considering a space armada was raining fire down upon an entire planet.

River and the Doctor were already in motion, fortifying the door and assessing the room. Danny watched them all warily, torn between bringing civilians into things and keeping Clara somewhere safe.

River and the Doctor exchanged a quick look, and then River was asking brusquely, "You'll need to barricade the doors and windows. Is there a basement here?"

Apparently deciding to take them at their word and square of paper, an Aplan rushed them quickly toward a cellar. "You'll be safe down here," one head reassured them while the other seemed to be in a state of shock. The other Aplans stayed to finish the barricades.

The building was dark and dank, but the foundations seemed solid, the sounds of weapons fire a distant rumble rather than a deafening roar.

"Are you all right?" Clara was at his side, hand settling tentatively over his arm.

Danny looked down to find his fists clenched, knuckles pale. He struggled to relax his hands, leaning heavily against a pillar and taking wary stock of his surroundings. "Yeah, you?"

Clara nodded, teasing lightly, "Nothing a cuppa won't fix." She was breathing hard but clearly unharmed.

Ahead of them, River was pacing, posture ramrod straight and hand tight on her gun. She had shrugged off the Doctor, who was watching her anxiously, hovering just out of her path. When he thought she wasn't looking, there was the kind of longing in the Doctor's eyes that spoke to a profound loss. It was only a second, and Danny would have thought he'd hallucinated it, only he could never have imagined that look on the Doctor's face.

The basement itself was large, and Danny knew instantly where they are. The multitudes of eyes tracking them, bored or curious or wary, from neat rows of cots were a dead giveaway.

Danny felt suddenly claustrophobic, the room spinning and his blood roaring in his ears, all thoughts about the possibility of the Doctor having feelings evaporating under the weight of it.

"Oh, hello, there," Clara waved to the children, grinning, "don't mind us." She turned to the Doctor, always looking to him for all the answers. "Are we in a nursery or a school?"

The Doctor offered a grim smile, his eyes quickly darting back to his wife's. "We're in The Foundry."

"It's a children's home," River clarified, her voice steady but clinical.

Clara's eyes widened guiltily, her hand on Danny's arm squeezing sympathetically, though it was the Doctor she was watching.

When Danny felt like he could speak, he pushed off the wall and away from Clara and her sympathy. He didn't want to be here, standing in an orphanage to hide from a war raging above their heads on a planet that wasn't even their own. It made him feel sick. And sad. He met River's eyes, one soldier to another. "I grew up in a place like this."

One head or two, a children's home was much the same. A place for those who didn't belong.

River tossed her curls in a movement that was too practiced to be casual. "So did I."

The Doctor scowled, looking positively furious for a moment before he pointedly turned his back on them, speaking in a hushed voice with one of the Aplans near the door.

Danny blinked, surprised by such vehemence. What did the Doctor know about children's homes? Or was he just annoyed that Danny was speaking to his wife at all? Danny had never exactly been his favorite person.

River caught his look and mustered a sad smile, her eyes on the Doctor's back and concern etched across her features. "Don't mind the Doctor - he doesn't like to hear about my childhood. Blames himself."

Danny understood the deflection - it was easier to focus on someone else in a place like this rather than to dwell on one's own memories. Danny latched onto the mystery, concentrating on keeping his breathing steady and not going into red alert at every groan or shake of the building. "Why would he blame himself for you growing up in a children's home?"

Giving careful shrug, River hedged. "It's a long story. Someone thought they could use me against the Doctor."

But that made even less sense. He was still trying to get the hang of this time-travel business - possibilities forever expanding. "But you were a child - hang on - did the Doctor know you when you were a baby?" Danny couldn't exactly hide a moue of disgust at the thought.

River just laughed, shaking her head, some of the tension leaching from her features. "Only long enough for me to insult his bowtie."

For the first (and likely last) time, Danny was eager to talk about the Doctor. "He doesn't wear a bowtie."

River finally holstered her gun, one hand resting at the hollow of her throat fondly. "He did when he was younger - oh, you should've seen him - all gangly limbs and puppydog eyes."

Once upon a time, hadn't the Doctor looked more like Adrian? Well, if that was still hard to wrap his head around, it was no more so than anything else he'd seen in relation to the Doctor. Still, Danny couldn't resist poking a bit of fun. "So he wasn't always this old and grumpy?"

"Oh, he is always old and grumpy. My fella." River's voice rose pointedly, "You shouldn't eavesdrop, Doctor - you never learn anything flattering about yourself."

The Doctor glanced up guiltily, nearly dropping his sonic from where he was fiddling with the door, even as he grumbled, "Who says I was listening?"

River bussed his cheek. "You were quiet. You're never quiet unless you're eavesdropping." Her hand squeezed his reassuringly anyway.

The Doctor scowled, but his hand followed hers as she moved away, lingering as long as he could.

Clara had already gathered the children into a game, even the most recalcitrant ones watching her eagerly. Danny couldn't help the fond smile as he watched his girlfriend charm the aliens effortlessly, soothing their fears and distracting them from the looming danger. Normally, he loved children, but he was feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment, and he couldn't afford to be distracted by games when their lives were on the line. Couldn't afford to let the children into his heart when he might be staring at their dead bodies in a few minutes. Not again.

Apparently having no such qualms with being distracted, the Doctor joined her easily, dropping to his knees and proving to be surprisingly great with the children. Danny hadn't really pictured the aggressive Scot as a good child-minder, even after their adventure in the one-day-forest, but the Doctor gestured and waved his arms and apparently told wild stories, much to the children's delight.

"Some things never change," River was watching the proceedings fondly, though she had hung back slightly with Danny.

If neither of them were exactly comfortable, at least the heavy tension of earlier had faded. River's posture had relaxed as she lounged against a wall, one hand on her hip and her attention split easily between the Doctor and the noise outside.

"River! Come and tell these little cynics that I _did too_ spend a month with otters!"

Grinning, River waved off his offer to join in. "But then I won't get to see your otter impersonation, sweetie."

The Doctor scowled as the children clamored for just such an impersonation, and River laughed. She offered Danny a conspiratorial wink. "It's true, though. He was being absolutely insufferable, so I left him there to stew. It took a week after to get the smell of wet otter out of the TARDIS."

He definitely didn't want to know. "Do you two have children?" Danny had never imagined the Doctor with children, still couldn't, despite the Doctor's surprising affinity for them. But then, he'd never imagined the Doctor with a wife either. Or a pack of otters, for that matter.

River stiffened and Danny regretted opening his mouth. It seemed he always managed to put his foot in it. He was about to stumble through an apology when River answered in a matter of fact whisper, not looking at him. "We can't. But the Doctor did, once, a long time ago."

Danny nodded, even though she had her eyes on the Doctor, sensing that topic was closed for further discussion. He didn't know why River had felt comfortable sharing that and he wished she'd not - the Doctor surely wouldn't appreciate Danny knowing. "The Doctor doesn't like me."

River turned to him at that, surprised. "Don't be silly; of course he does. He wouldn't have brought you along, otherwise." She sighed at his disbelieving look, tone gentling into something fond and concerned and protective all at once. "The Doctor has lived a long time, and sometimes people remind him of things he'd rather forget."

Danny shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced back to his shoes - covered with the dust of fallen buildings now. "You don't."

"No, I suspect I remind him of a multitude of things he'd rather forget."

Danny glanced up at that, surprised, but River did not elaborate. "He brought me because Clara made him. I'm a soldier," he explained, keeping his voice low like River, in case the Doctor was still eavesdropping. "Or, I was, before I was a maths teacher."

"I know," River smiled kindly. "And once upon a time, so was I. Before I was an archaeology professor. Even the Doctor has had his moments. We're all different all through our lives. That's good - you've got to keeping moving."

Danny shrugged awkwardly. It was a nice sentiment, but it didn't change the ugly truth that the Doctor was distinctly uncomfortable with Danny's former vocation. For a couple who seemed so devoted to one another, Danny was surprised that River didn't know. Or perhaps that was one of those things the Doctor would rather forget. He changed the subject, perhaps a bit awkwardly. "Well, we're not moving at the moment. The cover fire still hasn't let up, but there'll be ground troops soon."

"The Doctor has a plan," River tilted her head toward her husband, currently soliciting advice on the pitch of his sonic screwdriver from a dozen children. She caught Danny's dubious look. "Not to worry - I'll get us back to the TARDIS if it goes wrong."

"What about the people here?" Danny shied away from the word _children_ , doing mental acrobatics to avoid thinking about one child in particular, and a war that felt like yesterday. "We can't just leave them."

One eyebrow arched, River watched him closely. "You can't save everyone."

Danny winced, struggling not to let the unfairness of that show. No, not everyone could be saved. But that wasn't the point. It couldn't be. Was this really what Clara kept running off to see - whole planets in ruin and people that couldn't be saved? "Then why are you here?"

Seeing his poorly masked distress, River patted him once on the shoulder, a brief gesture of comfort. "To try." She offered a self-depreciating smile. "Honestly, I'm getting as bad as the Doctor."

Apparently they'd said his name one too many times, like Beetlejuice or Bloody Mary, because the Doctor chose that moment to appear at their side. He glanced between Danny and River and frowned. "I need your vortex manipulator, River."

Pushing off the wall, River sauntered toward her husband without a backward glance at Danny. "Ooh, are we paying the Sontaran high commander a visit? Strax will be terribly jealous."

The Doctor held out his hand impatiently. "I've got the right wavelength now. I just need to be within range of their communications array."

River blinked, unimpressed. "I'm not sending you into the Sontaran battle fleet alone and unarmed, sweetie."

He huffed, both of their voices getting more strident with each exchange. "Please, they're Sontarans, and it's hardly the first time. Someone needs to play child-minder."

Danny got the distinct impression that the Doctor wasn't talking about the orphans.

River crossed her arms over her chest in a way that made Danny blush and avert his eyes. When she spoke, it sounded as though it was through grit teeth, and Danny tensed, already vigilant and worried about the escalating conflict in the room. "Then I'll go and fetch the TARDIS."

The Doctor glowered, throwing up his hands in exasperation, though something in his tone had an edge that might have been desperation. "Absolutely not. The HADS will have activated and you'll never get a lock with all these energy weapons. It's stupidly dangerous."

"And going to the mothership is not?"

"Um, if I could just interrupt," Clara braved, looking thoroughly nonplussed at the argument occurring before her, and flanked by two dozen pairs of fascinated and frightened eyes. "Doctor, your sonic is flashing, which perhaps means it locked onto the signal."

The Doctor and River spun as one, argument apparently tabled as the Doctor held up his sonic and River tapped something into a PDA that had appeared in her palm from... somewhere.

The Doctor grinned, triumphant. "Ha. I knew it would work." He squinted at the tool again. "We'll only have ten minutes, at most."

River nodded, tapping something into a leather gadget around her wrist. "We'll be quick. Get the children ready while I fetch the TARDIS."

Turning with what almost looked like an apologetic grimace, the Doctor offered Clara and Danny a hasty, "You'll be perfectly safe here, no need to be alarmed."

Then he extended his sonic, a low buzzing filling the room until it seemed to echo in the very foundations of the building. River hit a last button on her wristlet, but the Doctor moved faster, catching her wrist and closing his hand over hers just before the two of them blinked out of existence with a fizzle and pop.

For one horrible moment, Danny had a vision of being trapped on this planet, in the middle of a war, for what suddenly seemed to be the very limited rest of his life. He turned to Clara, hoping that she could illuminate what had just happened.

Clara was glaring at the spot where the Doctor had just been, her mouth slightly open in surprise. But when she turned to Danny, that same bright smile was back, meant to be reassuring. "It's fine. I'm sure the Doctor and River will be right back."

Danny felt his heart sink. It wasn't fine and Clara wasn't sure, and this was the same look she had been giving him this whole trip. Something was wrong, the same something that had been nagging at him since Clara and the Doctor appeared in his sitting room with a bigger on the inside box and bigger on the inside lies.

Clara's hand clasped his, giving it a little squeeze, and Danny couldn't help but squeeze back. Clara was his... everything. She made him forget the nightmares that plagued him. She made him want to do anything for her - hell, he'd come on this ridiculous trip for her, even though he'd half known it would end up something of a disaster.

"The shelling has stopped, for the moment," Danny observed, trying hard not to panic or fall completely into his training. If he did that, it would be hard to think beyond keeping them safe. Hard to see civilians beyond just aliens.

"See, everything is perfectly fine," Clara announced too brightly for the benefit of their small audience. "Probably best that we gather up our things anyway, just to be safe."

Danny helped her and the Aplan caretakers pack up the children and their few belongings with the numb sort of mechanical detachment a boy by a different name had picked up in a long ago orphanage and honed in the military as Soldier Dan. _Fear is a superpower._ Words he'd hoped never to have to live by again.

Clara was watching him from the corner of her eyes, but she was also avoiding him more than a bit, as though it hurt her every time she was near him but she couldn't bear to be parted from him. With a lurch in his stomach, Danny realized it was the same look the Doctor had been giving River when she'd had her back turned.

"So, the Doctor's married?" Danny meant it as leading question, but he couldn't help the incredulity that colored his voice, even though it was clear that the Doctor very much was.

"Yes. He's absolutely married. So married!" Clara grinned, shaking her head. "When I mentioned I'd met River, he -" she paused, awkwardly, as though thinking better of finishing that story. "Well, it was obvious that he was in love with her. _Is_."

There was something there. Clara was frighteningly clever, but for all that, she was a terrible liar if one knew her well enough to spot her tells.

"Why didn't you mention? Why didn't he?" Danny felt a bit of a fool for wasting time being so jealous of the Doctor... but then, Clara had never dissuaded him, and surely she could have - should have - mentioned a wife.

Clara hedged, "Didn't I?" and Danny felt that wrong feeling growing.

"The Doctor was surprised," Danny realized, thinking of the moment the older man had frozen when River had first appeared. Clara was blinking up at him, so Danny elaborated. "To see his wife. You seemed surprised. Why?"

Clara's smile flickered and her eyes slid away from his. "It's complicated."

"You promised: no more lies."

Clara met his eyes at that, momentary hurt and panic flitting across her expression. She set down the blanket she was folding and edged closer to Danny, reaching out to brush an apologetic hand across his jaw. He leaned into her touch, but resisted the urge to wrap her in his arms. "It is complicated." She sighed. "They both travel in time and so they don't always meet in the right order. And, I think... I think that, from the Doctor's perspective, River has been... well, dead. I think she died, before we started travelling together."

Nodding numbly, Danny felt that sinking feeling double, heavy and ominous. "That's why you were so certain that she couldn't have met you." Even though they'd only just met, Danny couldn't help but feel a pang for River Song, so clearly alive and yet already dead. "I wish we'd never come here."

Fretting, Clara wrung her hands. "I'm sorry, Danny. I just wanted to... share an adventure with you. It wasn't supposed to be hiding from Sontarans in an orphanage."

He folded her into his arms at last, and Clara stiffened momentarily before releasing a pained sigh and burying her head into his shirt. "Oh, Clara, life with you is always an adventure. I don't need to visit other planets for that." He'd tried to tell her that, before, in the forest. It seemed Clara never learned.

She gave a watery sounding laugh, clutching him tightly. When he pulled back to look at her, Clara wiped hastily at her cheeks, smearing her makeup slightly in the process. She still looked beautiful. Clara was infuriating and challenging and he wouldn't change any of it. Even if it had brought him here, and even if here turned out to be the end of them. He leaned down, ready to kiss away Clara's frown.

There was a whirring noise behind them and then the sound of a throat clearing and the Doctor huffing, "Humans. Leave them alone for five minutes and they're all but snogging in front of children. Not sure how you manage it, PE - Clara's all... eyes..."

Clara sighed, her breath a whisper just millimeters from his mouth and they parted reluctantly, the mood effectively killed. She glared at the Doctor, standing in front of the TARDIS with his wild-haired wife. "Where did you go!?"

"To fetch the TARDIS, pay attention." The Doctor pushed open the doors, looking disheveled and annoyed. "Right then, don't stand there gawping. Everyone inside. There should be enough time for the Aplan High Command to mount a defense, but better to be safe."

They hurried the children and Aplan caretakers inside the TARDIS, where the Doctor admonished them all to sit still and not touch anything - apparently still not fond of sticky fingers on his ship, even if he'd shown a remarkable affinity with the children earlier - and River flitted about the console, apparently piloting the ship with far more aptitude than the Doctor.

The children sat dutifully where directed, looking around with undisguised wonder, but careful to heed the Doctor's directions not to touch anything or wander off. So different from the confident, wild bunch of students they'd shepherded through the TARDIS on their extended field trip, though Danny guessed they were about the same age. It could have been that they were aliens, but Danny recognized the looks on their faces. Orphan looks. Used to having nothing and no say.

The Doctor had lost his jumper somewhere during the trip to get the TARDIS, Danny noticed, a surprising pastel tee with a flower print clearly visible under his dark coat.

Clara arched her all-knowing teacher eyebrow. "River, you've missed a button."

The Doctor made a choked noise and spun toward the console.

River merely winked as she corrected her top. "Hazards of getting dressed in a hurry."

Oh. _Oh_. Danny opened his mouth before he could think better of it. "But you were only gone five  
minutes."

River laughed.

The Doctor glared from the far side of the machine. "Time travel, pudding brain. Honestly, Clara, I don't know what you see in him."

He expected Clara to make some cheeky remark, but the Doctor's expression fell, and when Danny turned, Clara was looking down.

"Everything," she mumbled, echoing his earlier thought, and holding onto Danny's hand tight enough that he worried he'd break something.

They landed with a barely-perceptible thump - much smoother than the Doctor's driving - and River announced brightly, "The Doctor and I will just pop out and get the children settled. Clara and Danny can mind the TARDIS."

The Doctor looked as surprised by this as Danny was. "They're orphans and there's a war on. What's the point in getting them settled?"

Danny winced and noticed Clara do the same. Orphaned children in a war. At least these children were still alive - for now.

River seemed unfazed, perhaps used to his terse manner. "Then we'll get them as settled as we can. Come on Doctor, children. Shouldn't take more than an hour or two," River's tone left no room for dissent, but she winked conspiratorially when she turned to Clara and Danny.

The Doctor grumbled under his breath but followed his wife, herding the children out of his ship with a markedly gentler manner than he showed adults, for all his gruff complaints.

And then, they were properly alone, for the first time in a week, in the big alien ship.

Clara was still holding his hand and not quite looking at him.

Danny stepped closer, gently lifting Clara's chin until she was looking at him. "Hey."

Neither of them were good with words - they both spoke before they could think and often said the wrong thing - but Clara's tremulous smile was exquisite. Everything he loved about her in big, dark eyes.

Clara froze for a second, and then opened her mouth to say something, but Danny leaned down and kissed her instead.

It was past due.

He'd wanted to kiss Clara since the moment he saw her - he always did - but neither of them were fond of public displays and he really hadn't fancied snogging her with the Doctor in the background, glowering.

As always, it was worth the wait. Clara was worth the wait. Worth alien planets and the Doctor's glares and wars and orphanages. Worth anything.

Only, when he pulled back to say so, Clara's eyes were shining and wet, the look on her face utterly devastated before she could hide it.

It was the same look the Doctor had on when he'd first seen River. When he'd kissed his wife, knowing she was dead.

Danny jerked away, but Clara's fingers tightened in his jumper, clutching him desperately, as though he might slip through her fingers. The way the Doctor's hands had lingered after River.

It was impossible, but he suddenly knew, without a doubt that - for Clara - he was already dead.

Well, that certainly explained a lot. Maybe he was starting to understand this time travel thing, more than he'd ever wished to.

He let Clara drag him close again. Oh Clara. He could see the circles under her eyes and the hopelessness in her expression. Danny took a deep breath and tried to be what she needed. He wondered if this was the last time he would see her. "Well, we've got an hour to kill," He winced at his own wording. "What should we do to keep ourselves occupied?"

Clara smiled; that beautiful, too quick, hiding things smile. "I suppose I ought to give you a proper tour." She took a deep breath. "We can start with my room."

"Sounds like the best plan I've heard all day." And he let Clara grip his hand tightly as he followed her lead.

...

They landed whisper-quiet in his sitting room, after what River assured them had only been five minutes, while the Doctor grumbled that he was _perfectly capable of being on time, thank you very much._

It seemed impossible - hours turned to minutes in the blink of an eye. As though the whole thing had never actually happened.

Clara's tiny hand clutching his, desperately, was a poignant reminder that it was all too real. "Are you sure you don't fancy another trip? They're not all like this."

Danny brushed her hair back from her eyes and let go of her hand, even though it gutted him to do so. He couldn't hang onto her, not here, not already dead. "Yeah, they are."

The Doctor and River were too silent for it to mean anything good, bent close together over the console, whispering under their breaths. For a moment, the Doctor looked distraught, and then his expression froze into a bitter scowl, his gaze snapping up to meet Danny's.

"Time to go." It was his usual short-tempered tone, but something in the way he gripped the console made a liar of him.

Clara made a distressed noise. "Surely-"

"No, the Doctor's right," Danny cut her off, pressing another kiss to her forehead. "Time to go." He lowered his voice. "I love you, Clara Oswald."

Blinking back tears, Clara nodded, her voice small but fierce. "I love you, Danny Pink."

"And I'm needed back for a lecture," River was saying, already striding toward the door, the Doctor at her heels. "Not that this wasn't lovely, sweetie, but Sontarans do play havoc with my time-table."

"Then stop antagonizing them," the Doctor groused, shoving his hands in his pockets in an effort that Danny thought was to stop from reaching for her. His voice was more faint than rebuking, and he'd maneuvered himself closer to Clara, as though worried she might break.

"You never let a girl have any fun," River accused, typing something onto her wristlet.

Praying to whatever deity that might listen that River actually had been correct about where and when they were, Danny offered the TARDIS occupants the most genuine statement he could muster, "It's been - enlightening," let his eyes find Clara's, "I'll see you soon, Clara. Count on it," and strode out the door before he could change his mind.

His sitting room was in front of him, unchanged. Somehow it felt as though it ought to be upside down or destroyed.

He let his head bang back against the wood of the TARDIS, fighting against the urge to drag Clara out with him, his pulse pounding in his ears.

After what might have been a moment or five, the door opened and River's head popped out. "Don't be too hard on him - today has been... difficult for the Doctor." Her voice was quiet, words only meant to be heard by him.

Pushing himself upright, Danny snorted his disbelief, sick of people making excuses for the Doctor, and risking River's apparently considerable wrath by insulting her husband rather than admit what a difficult day it really had been for all of them. "And that makes it okay to remind orphaned children that they have no homes and no hope of them? No families? Nobody who cares if-" He cut himself off before revealing even more, his fists clenched tightly at his sides.

River was watching him carefully, Danny could feel it even before he dared to meet her eyes. "The Doctor didn't want to give them false hope when they were lonely and scared."

"And what does he know about it?" Danny let his anger get the better of him and regretted it immediately. He already knew why today was difficult for the Doctor, more difficult than he could imagine. So difficult that it lashed the Doctor's words and cracked Clara's smiles.

River sighed, a sound filled with so many emotions that Danny met her eyes at last, and immediately wished he hadn't. The depth of love and sadness there was staggering. She stepped out of the TARDIS and let the door close behind her with whisper-soft finality. "What does the Doctor know about loss? I think my sweetie might be the loneliest man in the universe." She patted the blue wood idly. "The Doctor grew up in a place like The Foundry too, somewhere very far away and long ago. He forgets usually, on purpose. Forgets all the things and the people he's lost. But now he's lost me as well," her smile wavered but did not crack. She was stronger then he'd imagined. "And I think that makes it hard for him to forget." River shook herself out of it with a practiced blink and shake of her hair. "So don't be too hard on him, once I'm gone? He'll need you and Clara, even if he won't say."

It was a lot to absorb, like a weight suddenly on Danny's chest. The Doctor grew up in a children's home? It made Danny feel an odd swirl of pity and kinship for a man he generally disliked. For an alien, the Doctor was once again painfully, fragilely human. But the question that tumbled out of Danny's mouth was the one he already knew and feared the answer to. "Lost you?"

"I died." River shrugged as though that happened every day. "Well, I haven't yet, but I will do. For the Doctor, I already have."

Danny felt himself shaking on the inside, his nails biting into his palm. "How do you know? Did he - did he tell you?"

River laughed, a fluttering, tinkling sound, fragile like shattering glass. "He'll never say. But the way he looked at me after - well, I knew."

"I think," Danny began, the words welling up in his throat, "I die too. Soon. I think that Clara knows-"

"You mustn't tell her." River's voice was low and urgent.

"What?"

She sighed again, turning to watch as the TARDIS flared and faded into nothing behind her with a protesting wheeze. "That you know. Danny, you mustn't tell her. She needs you to be alive."

Nodding, even though River wasn't looking at him any longer, Danny forced his hands to unclench. "I don't mind, you know. Dying. I just wish I wasn't leaving her behind."

When she turned, that tragically sad smile was back on her face. "That's the hardest part." They exchanged a grim but determined look, one soldier to another, doing what was necessary to protect their loved ones. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Danny Pink."

Danny shoved his hands in his pockets and inclined his head. "Rupert."

"Hmm?"

He took a deep breath. "I used to be called Rupert. I changed it - I wanted to be a big strong soldier man. Now, I wish I could take it all back."

River offered a surprisingly soft smile. "Your name is what you make of it. I should know: I've had several."

Then a press of a button and she was gone. He was alone in his sitting room, and his mobile was chiming with a reminder. He was supposed to meet Clara at hers for tea. They were meant talk after their row in the forest.

Danny took a deep breath and grabbed his keys.


End file.
